sustainability and the environment: developing new
TRANSCRIPT
'Sustainability and the Environment: Developing New Disciplinary
Norms in Social Profession Education and Practice'
Friday 6th November 2020
Satu Ranta-Tyrkkö
Jyväskylän yliopisto
Background
The ecological and the climate crisis as interfaces of a broader systemic crisis
The climate crisis as an existential threat
… and what hinders us from combatting it
Why & how the crises matter for helping professions
Notes from Finland
Help from intergenerational and global ethics?
How to get forward?
What kind of future scenarios direct the orientation/ work? Time span?
How are you acknowledging the ecological and climate turmoil and responding/
preparing for it?
Manifests as economic/ sociocultural/ ecological crises/ ruptures/ transformations
Different fronts of the crisis flow into each other
The engine of the crisis: Capitalism
Renews itself through crises (Harvey)
Has until now relied on cheap natures (J. W. Moore: capitalism as world
ecology)
Logic of acceleration
The ecological crisis = resource crisis
”Humans are earthbound” (Latour 2017): crucial what takes place during the
kilometres from the bedrock to the atmosphere
How to share & cohabit the Earth?
What about those who have been/ fear being marginalized?
Hulme 2017, 6: ”The idea of climate allows humans to live culturally with their weather”.
Common approaches to the climate crisis
Re-secured climate
– ’Bringing climate back into order’
– Minimising the ’unnatural’ influences of humanity on the climate
Improvised Climates
– Climates not securable in the old modernist sense of mastery, design or purposeful
governance people cannot but take on a conscious and reflexive role, although the
outcomes of such responsibility will be severely circumscribed and unpredictable
Post-Climate
– ’Everything changes’: Climate change as a meta-category of changes, which are
simultaneously environmental, economic, technological, social and cultural
– ‘Climate’ may turn into a zombie concept – an idea which is dead, but which continues to live
as intellectual and imaginative legacy
There is no return to the relatively stable climates of the Holocene.
Fear: Instead of steady and gradual warming, the warming may take place abruptly and rapidly
( feedback loops)
Secure range is for self-accelerating not to take place not known
Paris Agreement +3,5 ⁰C?
5-7 ⁰C warming by 2100 is estimated to be relatively likely (10-20%) – but warming continues
after that
+ 5 ⁰ (McKinnon 2012), +4 ⁰ (Urry 2013, Gough 2017) =
– Massive extinction wave
– Human life possible (only) on northern hemisphere
– Constant scarcity of water, food, and energy wars
– The rich secure themselves, restricted mobility for the poor?
– Collapse of organised societies & human dignity
– Each generation has lesser survival chances than the previous one (Mulgan 2011, Gardiner
2006, 406-407)
The climate crisis is an ”epochal threat multiplier” that is already (+1⁰ C)
increasing vulnerability and inequality
Balance of the biosphere is severely threatened because of human activities,
human existence included
The threat challenges the value, meaningfulness and ethical justification of
human existence also in the present anxiety, sense of despair and
insignificance
Although other living organisms suffer and may die out, the climate crisis is
essentially a human existential problem due to the human quest for meaning
and normative differentiation between good and bad, right and wrong
Gardiner (2006): Climate Change as ‘A Perfect Moral Storm’ – global,
intergenerational, and theoretical – making us vulnerable to moral corruption
Climate change is largely a by-product of daily (fossil fuel dependant) human life
Climate change remains abstract & difficult to conceive, whereas we like to work on
specific, local, concrete issues & what is close to us (e.g. Pihkala 2017)
Environmental risks & natural scientific facts on them resonate poorly with human
psychological operations: confronting uncertainty with emotion & being often optimistic
even without grounds
‘Limited pool of worries’ (Skirmishire 2010)
Difficulty to give up privilege & biased understanding of root causes of problems & limited
capacity to act even when motivated to do so
Climate friendly/ ecological choices & practices may be inconvenient & costly
We are notably silent on issues that really matter (might hurt, silencing power structures,
group pressure…)
Instead of tackling risks, we get used to them: if nothing can be done, why to bother?
Awareness of the gravity of the situation has not transformed into required radical
enough action – inability of liberal democracies to make the needed reforms (fear of
backlash)
In politics: attempt to keep the world as it is instead of radically changing it
Plenty of (hollow) sustainability talk, yet unsustainability is grounded deep in our cultural
practices – consumerism as happiness
Ecological consumer choices often beyond the reach/ interest of the poor, easily seen as
elitist
Economic growth and competitiveness remain high priorities, providing also the
financial base of social professions
Latent processual inequality renewed through
societal structures
Normalised (flying, current level of meat
consumption)
Structural (blurring harm causing mechanisms)
Distant in time and space (action effect)
• Global change requires local action
need of locally & globally just and
sustainable solutions
• Reviving democracy through
localization of politics and re-politicising
the everyday
• However, re-politicising things does not
guarantee change for the better
• Post-politics: fragmented identities –
politics is just one (not very highly
ranked) form of self-realization
• Still politics is not dead, but needs to be
re-thought and invigorated?
The proximity of apocalypse can mobilise humanity to act
Inaction is (a passive) choice
To be able to act, we need to be able to believe that change is possible
The current ecological crisis is also a crisis of hope (Amsler 2010)
At worst, hopelessness may lead not only into inability but also unwillingness
to imagine a better world
There is no social/ cultural/ economic sustainability without ecological sustainability
protecting and guarding it is a necessity even from a purely anthropocentric perspective
Social justice view: Runaway climate crisis could destroy everything social work and other
social professions claims to stand for (ethical and mission statements)
– With the climate and the ecological crisis no-one is secured, but the rich can afford
lifeboats
In social work:
– How to interpret social work’s commitment to protect the poor & the vulnerable at this
historical moment?
– Responsibility toward ´distant others’ i.e. those far away from us in time and space?
Social/ helping professions & professionals as organised communities – what can we do?
In this, social professions & related disciplines & movements
have a role to play how to apply their knowhow creatively
to enable the change?
Overall: need of alternative values, practices and structures
(Ruuska & Heikkurinen 2019) for ecosocial sustainability
transition to take place
When ethics plays a central role, need to rethink and renew
ethics so that it enables proactive action and minding about
distant (human and non-human) others
Can contribute the sector-crossing and transdisciplinary sustainability transition e.g.
– With its special knowhow on’ the social’, especially inequality and vulnerability
– With its time tested ways to work with individuals and communities
Supporting the emotional and other processes people need to go through
Organising meaningful living, care, support and recreational systems locally
– By engaging politically (structural social work just transition) and working for social justice and societal
peace
– By collaborating with and learning from others working on the same direction
– By itself relearning and embedding more respectful and collaborative ways to relate with and be part of
nature, with human responsibilities
Requires theoretical, institutional and practical renewal of the field, including incorporating the ecosocial
paradigm into social work
Ethics being central to social work mission and practice, need to develop global and intergenerational ethics,
which is heretofore largely non-existent
Something similar needs to & is taking place in other disciplines?
Growing interest in ecosocial/ green / environmental social work
In municipal social work little scopes for ecosocial practice & difficulty to grasp what would be
in practice
In Academy: From a marginal field into an acknowledged field of research
University of Jyväskylä: new course ’Social work in ecosocial transition’
Currently ongoing: A survey for social workers and socionoms (the two professions with
higher education in the field of social work) on their attitudes and practices regarding
environment/ ecosocial work, sent via e-mail to 12 000 recipients
• How to think about the future? • How politically and ethically relate with the
future?• What is our responsibility for the
consequences of our current thinking? • How to feel empathy towards distant others?• Why I should give up my selfishness, when
others do not?
– Dealing with the environment related worriedness,
sorrow, guilt and anxiety (e.g. Pihkala 2017)
– Learning away from destructive modes and beliefs
– Generating and sharing more hopeful stories about
being human
– Ability be present and connect with the Earth (vs.
escapism etc.)
The eco anxiety does not disappear by being silent about it need to find non-paralysing
ways to deal with it
Emotions that eco anxiety evokes
guilt, shame, sorrow, helplessness, fear
Ways to react
Apathy, denial, techno-optimism, narcissistic
consumerism
From despair to hope
Acknowledging the facts, ‘seasons of mind’,
emotion work
From anxiety to action
Learning, justice, respect, participation,
care
Our response to these crises, and the systemic crisis overall, matters for who we are, and not
only for the future generations and the rest of the planet
Need to develop systemic alternatives, Diversity and complexity as starting points: Pluriverse
Need of critical analyses of power frictions, other stories & stories of others
Developing alternatives is active also outside academy/ established professions
– e.g. discourses of transition such as. Vivier Bien (good life), Degrowth, Commons,
Ecofeminism, Rights of Mother Earth, Deglobulisation, Post-Extractivism….)
www.systemicalternatives.org
– Starting point: the interconnectedness of current social, economic and ecological crises
– Diversity and complexity as starting points: Pluriverse
– Demands of radical cultural and institutional transformation
– Acknowledgement of local and indigenous communities’ right to their areas
– Heretofore development and economic growth the mainstream approach that legitimates
overconsuming ways of life as a base for economic growth)
Our sphere of responsibility is larger than just one’s organization/ professional group/ nation/ humanity
’The revolution’ takes place every day, everywhere
Anyone can be an activist, but together and as members of different communities we are stronger – and most influential
– Inspiration (?): https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/
THANK YOU!
JYVÄSKYLÄN YLIOPISTO
5.11.2020
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